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Stocks and broths are the foundation of good cooking, yet information on their use is often relegated to the introductions or appendices of cookbooks. Until now there has not been a comprehensive culinary guide to stocks in the canon, save for snippets here and there. Hard to believe, since most passionate home cooks and professional chefs know that using stocks and broths—both on their own and as the base for a recipe—can turn a moderately flavorful dish into a masterpiece. Mastering Stocks and Broths is the comprehensive guide to culinary stocks and broths that passionate home cooks and innovative chefs have all been waiting for.

Rachael Mamane, a self-taught cook and owner of small-scale broth company Brooklyn Bouillon, is reminiscent of M. F. K. Fisher, Patience Gray, and Julia Child. She takes us on a culinary journey into the science behind fundamental stocks and the truth about well-crafted bone broths, and offers over 100 complex and unique recipes incorporating stocks as foundational ingredients. Mastering Stocks and Broths includes a historical culinary narrative about stocks in the classic French technique as well as through the lens of other cultures around the world. Readers will learn about the importance of quality sourcing, the practical and health benefits of stocks and broths, and detailed methodology on how to develop, store, and use them in a home kitchen.

The recipes place a playful emphasis on the value of zero waste, turning spent bones, produce seconds, and leftover animal fats into practical products to use around the home. Readers will turn to this book when they find themselves wondering what to do with the carcass of a store-bought roast chicken and they want to learn how to make every inch of their vegetables go further.

Perhaps most important to remember: a good stock takes time. This is part of the pleasure—making stocks is meditative and meaningful, if you allow yourself the occasion. Building a stock often happens in the background of most kitchens—a smell that permeates a residence, a gentle warmth that radiates from the kitchen. Readers will be inspired by Mamane’s approach to truly slow cookery and her effervescent love for food itself.

REVIEWS AND PRAISE

Booklist–

"Mamane’s exhaustive guide to understanding and preparing stocks and broths aims to be the definitive modern guide to the subject. Mamane illuminates the science, history, and cultural anthropology of this all-important culinary foundation, in addition providing step-by-step instructions. As chef and owner of Brooklyn Bouillon, she is an authority on the challenges and importance of sourcing high-quality ingredients and speaks with abundant first-hand experience about its benefits, from animal welfare to the environment to the cooking pot. The book’s first half covers those major principles, then offers specific methods to produce a variety of meat, poultry, seafood, and vegetable stocks and broths. Each is followed by distinctive recipes that rely on the slow-simmered brews and their byproducts, such as veal marrow dumpling soup, requiring the marrow as well as veal stock and chicken stock, or clams in saffron emulsion, which uses shellfish, stock, clam liquor, and whey. Mamane even includes directions to up-cycle leftover fats and bones into cosmetics, fertilizer, and other home products. A full-throated ode to slow food cooking and a zero-waste ethos.”

“If you have ever tried to imagine the most definitive encyclopedia on stocks, sauces, and broths, here it is. Mastering Stocks and Broths is wildly practical and comprehensive. Everyone who aspires to see health germinate from their kitchen needs to follow Mamane’s lead. I can’t imagine a single question unanswered in this marvelous book.”—Joel Salatin, Polyface Farm; author of You Can Farm

“Mastering Stocks and Broths is the most thorough book on the subject I’ve come across. Rachael Mamane’s writing is as beautiful, thoughtful, and caring as her approach to food, the table, and her stocks. And I love the intriguing recipes that she has interspersed throughout the book. If one really used this book, one would emerge a truly excellent cook and, I dare say, person. Here is to deep passion and thoroughness. Kudos!”—Deborah Madison, author of Vegetable Literacy and In My Kitchen

“Equal parts inspiration and encyclopedia, this fabulous book will be reached for again and again. It truly does contain everything you need to know to let broths and stocks enrich your kitchen with nutrition, flavor, and depth. Mamane’s recipes are truly irresistible, and the science and history she weaves throughout add multilayered meanings to the guidance she provides, inviting you on an adventure with each dish she offers.”—Jessica Prentice, author of Full Moon Feast; cofounder, Three Stone Hearth

“Rachael Mamane takes stock making to a whole new level in Mastering Stocks and Broths, from making a basic stock to the many ways of thickening and flavoring this fundamental ingredient into delicious sauces, gravies, soups, and stews. This book deserves a place in the kitchen of all serious—and not so serious—cooks.”—Sally Fallon Morell, president, The Weston A. Price Foundation

“It’s always been my preference to surround myself with people who are willing to go deep. I’m not really interested in making time for anyone else. By deep, I mean people who work and study hard, people who aren’t afraid to ask questions, people whose enthusiasm for experimentation never wavers, people who, above all else, are willing to sacrifice for the sweet pleasure of slowly obtained mastery. I especially like to read books written by those people. Rachael Mamane is one of those people. In this remarkable tome, she manages to write about bones and broth and stock on four very different levels at once: the spiritual, the symbolic, the technical, and the practical. Maybe I should throw in the political, too. Read this book. Like Rachael’s stocks and broths, it will heal you. It will also bring you into the deep.”—Camas Davis, butcher; writer; owner, Portland Meat Collective

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rachael Mamane

Rachael Mamane is the chef and owner of Brooklyn Bouillon, a value-added product company that explores ways to minimize agricultural food waste while providing a staple product to home cooks across New York State. Her work in reducing consumptive waste streams has been featured by the New York Times, Modern Farmer, The Splendid Table, and Food Curated. Her project participation with Feeding the 5000 was supported by the United Nations Environmental Program. She has exhibited at Harvard Law School and participated in early food incubators at Stanford University and Babson College. She is unafraid to spend nights with slow-roasting animals and is genuinely excited about eating carrot tops.

AUTHOR VIDEOS

Food Curated: Brooklyn Bouillon

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